Thursday, June 7, 2007 - 10:30 AM
375

Linking exotic snails and inorganic carbon cycling in Kelly Warm Springs, Grand Teton National Park

Erin R. Hotchkiss and Robert O. Hall. Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071

The freshwater snail, Melanoides tuberculata, has achieved a high abundance and a biomass of 24 g AFDM m-2 after invading Kelly Warm Springs (Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming) approximately five years ago.  This high biomass suggests that introduced populations of M. tuberculata may dramatically alter inorganic carbon cycling through respiration rates and shell synthesis.  The effect of biotic calcification has yet to be considered in most freshwater carbon budgets, which tend to ignore animals and assume that any changes in total CO2 concentrations are from primary production and community respiration, after accounting for groundwater inputs and evaporation rates.  In order to estimate calcification rates for M. tuberculata, we calculated growth rates and frequencies for a range of size classes and developed a length/mass regression for shell CaCO3 (n = 157, r2 = 0.99).  Using these data, we found that M. tuberculata in Kelly Warm Springs produce up to 27 g CO2 m-2 during summer months by shell growth alone.  This rate of CO2 production via biotic calcification is among the highest reported for freshwater systems and suggests the importance of considering the role of calcification in inorganic carbon budgets for areas dominated by calcifying organisms.

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